“It’s the first time I’ve ever seen it.” Dr D’Acre stood. She was a slender woman in her late forties, short cropped hair, just a trace of lipstick, a woman who was growing old gracefully. She turned to Hennessey. Their eyes met, briefly, knowingly, then she turned her head away.
“It?” There was a note of warmth in his voice.
“Mummification.” D’Acre looked down at the body. “I’ve read about it, of course. I’m familiar with it, theoretically speaking, but I’ve never come across it…”
“In the flesh?”
“I was trying to avoid using that phrase. But yes, this is the first time I have met mummification. But now I can cross it off my ‘things to do’ list. Explaining the warm clothing… the height of summer. He could have been dead for years.”
“Years?”
“Mummification. No decomposition of the flesh or the features, but inside he’ll be hollow. He’ll be very light to carry. It means that immediately upon death he was placed in an airtight place. No insects to eat up the lovely juicy flesh. The flesh itself became as parchment and as such was of little interest to present-day – this time, this day – insects. But decomposition is beginning, a much slower rate than if he was fresh, but the sooner we get him to York City, the better.”
“So he was placed in an airtight room…”
“Or container.”
“Or container, possibly for years, and then for some reason removed a few days ago and left in a very exposed place. Why?”
“Well that, Inspector, is definitely your department. I, for my part, have to address the question of how? How did he meet his end, before his time?”
“Amstrad” was a Persian. His true given name was obscure even in his native land, which he claimed was and always would be Persia – he having left before, and distancing himself from, the Ayatollah’s rule. In the United Kingdom, the closest his British colleagues came to the accurate pronunciation of his name was that of a British electronics company. So Amstrad he was, though he occasionally remarked that no one, not even his darling English rose of a wife, could pronounce his name like his dear mother had once pronounced it; but he bore the mispronunciation with patience, tolerance, and good humour. He was a diligent man and was so on the day he carefully extracted the garments from their sealed cellophane wrapper, and laid them one by one, side by side, on the surface of the bench, his bench, in Her Majesty’s Forensic Science Laboratory, Wetherby, West Yorkshire. There were undergarments, of the thermal variety, so-called “long johns”, two pairs of socks, a pair of heavy walking shoes, thick woollen trousers, a thick shirt, a pullover, a heavy jacket, fleece lined, all of the size that would fit a small man, or a growing boy. Amstrad Baft was a small man too, but larger than had been the owner of these garments. Bespectacled and white-coated, he began a minute square-inch by square-inch survey, trawling for clues, anything, anything at all which would indicate the recent history of the clothing, or perhaps the cause of death of the wearer.
Finding nothing of note from the normal-vision examination, he made a search of the pockets. All were empty, except the right-hand pocket of the jacket. It contained a till receipt from the Co-op supermarket in the centre of York, timed at 18:06 hours on the 15th day of January – eight years earlier. A man would not keep a till receipt in his jacket pocket for eight years, but it would, reasoned Amstrad Baft, be the sort of thing that wouldn’t be noticed if someone else was rifling through the pockets. He placed the receipt in a cellophane sachet and then began to examine the fibres of the clothes’ under the electron microscope.
Thursday
On the Thursday morning, Chief Inspector Hennessey took two telephone calls which were relevant to the inquiry into the death of “the mummy”, as he had privately come to think of the man found by the canal. The first was from Dr A. Baft of the Forensic Science Laboratory at Wetherby, who gave his first name as something which to Hennessey’s ears sounded like “Amstrad”, but he was unsure and so addressed the caller as “Dr Baft”, as indeed he would have done anyway. Dr Baft informed him that the clothing was clean and of high quality, indicating a man of substance, though perhaps short of stature. The clothing seemed old, of earlier fashion, but had not deteriorated, and Dr Baft advanced that it had been preserved in some way.
“Dr D’Acre, the forensic pathologist, believes the corpse to have been mummified in some way.” Hennessey glanced at the word “substance” on his notepad, circled it, and wrote “money motive?” beside it.
“That would explain the preserved clothing,” Dr Baft said. “I also came across a till receipt.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, in the pocket of the jacket, just where a fella would put a receipt at eighteen-oh-six hours on the fifteenth of January eight years ago. He went to the Co-op in York and bought foodstuffs. He paid with a ten-pound note and got two pounds, fifty-three pence in change. He bought vegetables, some tinned stuff, four pints of milk, and a pizza, a frozen pizza… and a packet of tea bags.”
“A bachelor?”
“You think so?”
“Living alone, anyway, one frozen pizza is a single person’s purchase.”
“I suppose it is, come to think of it. That’s a police officer’s brain working, I would never have thought of that.”
“If indeed the receipt is his, but who carries other folks’ till receipts around in their pockets? It was probably the last purchase of his life. Four pints of milk, a large packet of tea bags, he was stocking up. He didn’t expect to die.”
“Again, a police officer’s brain.”
“Too long in the job, Dr Baft.”
And the two men smiled at each other down the phone. It was the first time they had spoken to each other, and a mutual liking grew rapidly.
“The year,” Dr Baft said “that was the year my daughter was born, she was born in May, but I remember taking my wife to antenatal clinics in dreadful weather. That was the year of that bad winter. I despaired of it going, I thought the next ice age had arrived, didn’t let up until mid April.”
“I remember, who could forget? My dog loved it, though. Like all dogs he suffers in the heat.”
“There was nothing else in the pockets. No wallet, no loose change, no letters, no utility bill, nothing, as if someone had rifled his pockets, but hadn’t found or hadn’t bothered with the till receipt.”
“Which, in the end, told us much.”
“It appears. I’ve had a glance at the plastic sheeting, found nothing, but I’ll give it a closer examination this p.m.”
“Appreciated.”
The second phone call in respect of “the mummy” came from Dr Louise D’Acre.
“A single massive blow to the skull.” Louise D’Acre spoke matter-of-factly. “No other injuries, no trace of poison. He once wore a wedding ring, but had taken it off. Its ‘shadow’ was on his ring finger.”
“Ah…”
“Is that significant?”
“Answers a question. We found a till receipt in his pocket; the indication of the purchases was that he was a bachelor. It now seems he may be a divorce. But a man who lived alone anyway.”
“He was a man in his mid forties. Forty-four, -five, or -six. I took a tooth from the upper set of teeth, cut it in half. Gave me an age of forty-five, and that test asks that a margin of twelve months on either side be allowed.”
Hennessey wrote “45 ± 12/12” on his pad. “He took good care of his teeth, British dentistry, so there’ll be dental records to check once you have a possible name for him.”